Lament

May 25, 2014

John 14:15-21

Easter 6a

In the bible, there is a genre of literature called the Laments. 

They are mostly found in the book of Lamentations, and the Psalms, but can be found in other pieces of biblical literature and speak of the fickleness of human nature, the frailty of human bodies, and the experience of wondering where God is in the midst of things that we cannot understand.  It also speaks of our need to mourn loss.   

David mourns the death of his best friend, Jonathan, and his enemy, Saul, in 2^nd Samuel after both lost their lives on the battle field.  Job laments three times that loss of everything he had.  Jeremiah wrote a whole book of poetic laments about the destruction of Jerusalem in Lamentations.

In Psalm 151, we hear “out of the depth I cry to you, o Lord.” Psalm 22, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me” repeated by Jesus on the cross.  John 10 “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

But these are not our texts for this morning…so why bring them up now?

It’s because our ability to lament as individuals and a community have been stifled. 

Many of us with gather tomorrow at grave sites to honor the dead, others will attend parades and ceremonies that honor the sacrifice of our nation’s military personnel.  But how many more Americans don’t remember the meaning of this day anymore beyond a day off to barbeque and kick off summer?  And what about our lament over the active duty soldiers and veterans who have taken their own lives because the psychological damages done during their service.  A statistic I found this week noted that in the 22 states that report it, 22 veterans and 1 active duty personnel commit suicide each day.  Where are our words of lament for these lives?

Friday night six people were left dead and other seven were wounded near the University of California Santa Barbara campus at the hands of a young man who was later the seventh person whose life ended in the incident.  As of February 13, 2014, the New York Times noted that between the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school and the day that edition of the newspaper went to print, there had been 44 other mass shootings resulting in 28 deaths.  Over the weekend of Easter in the city of Chicago at least 9 people were killed and 36 people injured in shootings. 

In the last month, there have been news reports about mudslides killing 41, ferry boat accidents killing almost 300, flooding in Eastern Europe, and fires in California and Colorado, mines collapsing in Turkey.  The Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Harran are still in captivity, and in this country 1 in 5 children will go to be hungry tonight, just like they did last night. 

Where are our words of lament in a world that seems to be falling apart?

My God, My God, why have you forsaken us?

Out of the depths we cry to you!

Lord, if you had been here, this wouldn’t have happened. 

We are not at ease, nor are we quiet, we are not at rest, but turmoil comes

We don’t lament well.  In the most well-meaning of ways, we put time frames on mourning losses.  I have two dear friends who have had children die either in the womb or shortly after birth.  Josiah was killed by a cord accident at 37 weeks.  Joseph was born too early, and died about an hour after he was born.  And my friends recall being told “not to mourn too long, God will give you another child.” But no child could ever replace their first born children, their sons.  One of my first funerals was for a man who committed suicide leaving his wife and four teenage sons.  And I witnessed as these boys were told that one day they would not miss their dad as much as they did on that day. 

We don’t lament well.  We lament as if it is not normal and that we need permission to be sad or to get angry or to wonder just what in the world our God is up to if such things in this world are allowed to happen.

We lament, I’m guessing, as if we were disciples sitting in the upper room with Jesus as he told them openly that he was going to leave them. 

We don’t know where you are going, Lord, how will we know the way?

The community to which the writer of the Gospel of John was addressing was a community in the midst of trying to figure out just where they fit in the grand scheme of things.  In the context of persecutions, ousting from the synagogues, etc., they were probably a community feeling abandoned, perhaps even betrayed.  They had put so much faith and trust in this Jesus and look at them now.  Bruised and beaten as a community they asked the same questions that every other generation, faithful and unfaithful alike, have asked at one time or another– where is God now? A God who allows young men and women to come home from combat so consumed by post-traumatic stress disorder that their only escape is to end their lives, a God who allows shooters to hold people captive to fear unless we ourselves are armed, a God who allows teenaged sons to be abandoned by their father, a God who allows the arms of brand new parents to be left empty, a God who would send his only son into the world to die a cruel and unusual death, is a God whose faithfulness and credibility we question. 

And it is to such circumstances that Jesus speaks as he did to the disciples “I will not leave you abandoned.”  “I will pray the Father, and he will give another advocate, to be with you forever.”

The disciples needed to hear this in the midst of losing their beloved teacher, and we need to hear this today just as much as they did.  For we are all people who have bumped up against lament inducing circumstances for which there is an allowance to look up into the heavens and to address our almighty, ever present, all loving God with the question “why?” 

And we hear again Jesus’ words “I will not leave you abandoned.” I will not leave you orphaned.  I am about to go to hell and back for you so that there will be no depth to which you can sink that I haven’t been to.  There is no put too deep for me to get to you.  We have a God who sent his son to die so that there was no depth of despair that we could reach that God’s own self hadn’t seen in person.

And though the world does not see God himself, in the flesh, coming to us the ultimate depths of our despair, we can still know that we are not abandoned, we are not left to our own devices.  We have a community to lament with, brothers and sisters who were baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection just as we were, who eat with us the body and blood of Christ, who walk on the earth letting the prisoners go free, healing the sick, standing with those who mourn, bringing life to the places where it seems that death dwells. 

And as weird as this may sound, knowing that we are surrounded by a community of brothers and sisters who walk with us when we are at our worst, knowing that we are being worried for so that we don’t have to worry about ourselves, gives us the freedom and the permission to lament, to cry out knowing that our cries will be heard, resting in the knowledge that our lament doesn’t need to end until we are ready, trusting that we are not alone, and that we never will be.    

Stephen's stoning and Confirmation

When I first read through the readings for this Sunday, I kind of chuckled a bit that the first reading for the Sunday on which we celebrate Confirmation is the story of the stoning of Stephen, the first “Christian” martyr.  I use “Christian” in quotation marks because the church wasn’t called Christian yet in Stephen’s time.  They were called members of the “The Way,” followers of Christ, who himself is the way and the truth and the life, as we heard this morning in our Gospel reading from John. 

When I got to thinking about things, though, the choice between preaching on a text that is very commonly used at funerals, and preaching on a text that really describes what life as a teenager can feel like some days, the way was pretty clear. 

Stephen’s story doesn’t get much play in preaching circles.  And I think that this is mostly because his story is so short.  We meet Stephen in the 6^th chapter of Acts, where he is described as a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, and then 3 verses later he is arrested, he preaches to his captors, and is stoned to death by the end of Chapter 7.  In the grand scheme of the book of Acts, Stephen plays more of a cameo role than anything else.  So why even give him any pulpit time? 

I think that Stephen is important because of what he is trying to do in his sermon, which we never hear in the lectionary. 

Some have seen his speech in the 6^th and 7^th chapters of Acts as a means of pitting Christianity against Judaism.  Unfortunately, in many of these circumstances, this reading of the text has led to people seeing persecution of the Jews as justified. 

But that is not what Stephen was trying to do.  Stephen was a Jew living in a period in which there was a lot of intra-Jewish struggle over identity within the context of the person of Christ.  And so, in his sermon to those who falsely accused and arrested Stephen, he was pulling on the story of God and God’s people, Israel, as a way to defend against charges that the members of The Way were radically divisive and turning away from God’s covenant and laws. 

And he does this drawing a line between two groups of people, those who accepted God’s message and the messengers who brought this message, and those who rejected them.  For Stephen, he and the members of “The Way” were aligned with Abraham and Joseph, the prophets, and Jesus, whereas his opponents were aligned with the Egyptians, Joseph’s brothers, those who disobeyed God and Moses in the wilderness, and the ancestors who killed the prophets. 

What would your reaction be to being compared to the killers of the prophets, the Egyptians, etc., etc.? 

Granted, we don’t live in a time when literal stoning takes place in this country, but there’s still room for a good dose of anger, right? 

And what does this have to do with the four of you on the day in which you confirm your Baptismal vows?

It has to do with this question – What is your story going to be?

When you go to school tomorrow, and your friends ask about your weekend, what will you tell them?

Will you tell them “oh, it was ok…went to church, chilled with my family, you know, the normal stuff.” 

Or will you tell them about what you have done and what you are going to do today.  That you stood in front of your church family and read your own personal statement of faith.  That you spoke to us in honest words that you don’t have it all figured out, that you have questions, that you have doubts.  That you renewed the promises that your parents made for you when you were baptized, promising to continue to be active in the church and in the work that God is calling you to do. 

You have this choice, the choice to script the story you will tell to your friends in school tomorrow.  You have the choice to add whatever you wish to the script of the story that you tell the world tomorrow through your words and through your actions.

And the easy choice might be the first story, generalizations as if not much happened at all.  I’m not going to fault you for that.  This time in your life is difficult.  Around you are messages in school, on TV, in magazines, even in books, that you are supposed to be perfect, that you are supposed to measure up to a specific level of success, that in order to be considered cool by your friends and classmates, you have to fit a certain criteria.  It is easy to come home from school feeling like you have been through a figurative stoning from the words and insults that are so easily thrown at each other day in and day out.  So why take the risk of another stoning when you can just take the easy road?  I get it.  I really do. 

But here is my challenge to you.  It comes in two parts. 

The first, is to claim the gospel as your own.  And the message of the Gospel in the story of the stoning of Stephen is that in our living and in our dying, Jesus stands with us.  In our triumphs and in our defeats, Jesus stands with us.  On our best days and on our worst days, Jesus stands with us.  Jesus will not let us go it alone.  Claim this, embrace it, let it give you strength and courage as your script your story because you are all children of God, beloved, named, and claimed.    

My second challenge to you as you continue to grow in your faith throughout to be the voice of Stephen in the church.  Stephen called out the leaders of the church on where they were going astray.  As young people with faith that is still childlike (and I say that as a compliment), hang on to that faith.  Use the eyes of your faith to call the church out when you see that we could be doing better.  Help us to see the ways in which we should be serving the community but are not.  Help us to see how we can be more faithful in spreading the message of the Gospel. With your fresh eyes, you can see things that we cannot. You can tell when someone is trying to sell you a bill of goods.  And when you call out the church, we may be challenged, we may not like what we hear.  But it will lead us all into a future in which Christ and the world are better served.  And forgive us when we come up short.  Thankfully, our eternal destination is in God’s hands and not dependent on us, because we are not perfect.  And remember, you are not the future of the church, you are the church now. 

Oh, and we promise not to stone you. 

Surely Jesus is in this place

Easter 3A

May 4, 2014

Luke 24:13-35

“Surely God is in this place, but I didn’t know it.” In the 28^th chapter of Genesis, Jacob is in the process of traveling to Haran to escape the wrath of his brother Esau.  Esau had threatened to kill Jacob after Jacob had tricked their father, Isaac, into giving Jacob Esau’s blessing.  During his travels to his uncle’s house, he stops one night to sleep and during the night dreams of the angels of God ascending and descending a staircase and God speaks to Jacob and tells him that God will not leave Jacob until God does for him what he has promised.  And in the morning, Jacob awakes and the first thing out of his mouth was, “surely God is in this place, but I didn’t know it” (Genesis 28:16a).

Generations later, two people were walking down the road on the first day of the week.  They were joined by a stranger, with whom they engaged in conversation for the duration of their journey.  They would invite this stranger in for the night.  They would have a meal.  And their eyes would be opened in the breaking of the bread, but it would only when the stranger disappeared that they would say to one another “surely it was Jesus in this place, but even though our hearts were burning, we didn’t notice it.” 

In the story of the journey to Emmaus, Luke addresses a question that has been plaguing both the early Christian community and those outside of the community – If you really have a risen Jesus, where is he?

Prove it.

In fact, it was such a big deal that in Matthew 28, there is an account of the priests paying off guards so that they would tell people that Jesus’ disciples had come and taken his body away in the middle of the night so that any resurrection talk would go away.

So the early Christian community was struggling with this.  And so were the outsiders who were hearing about accounts of a risen Jesus. 

And it is a story that we can genuinely place ourselves into and have it speak to us in the same way that it spoke to the early Christian community. 

One of the things that Christians have come up against in recent decades is a battle between some Christians that are trying to prove the existence of God, and some Atheists that are trying to prove that there is no God and that the notion of faith is silly. 

Prove it, the atheists say.  If you really have an all knowing, all loving being, where is he?

Further, they say, if there really is a higher power, where is he when abuses happen in the church? Where is he when natural disasters happen?  Why in the world would he allow his own child to die for the likes of the rest of us? And why would he let us go to war in his name? 

And, if we are honest, there are parts of the Christian community that serve to egg them on a bit.  Factions who claim that school shootings happen because we have said no to God in schools because there is no corporate prayer.  Factions who claim that natural disasters are punishment for the actions of feminists, gays, and liberals.  Factions who claim to be pro-life but push for violence instead of diplomacy, call for cuts to food stamps and nutrition programs for children, cry out for the need to arm ourselves to the teeth with guns so we can protect our castles, even if it means someone has to die, and advocate for the death penalty. 

If there really is a God, critics say, we’re not seeing it.  Because if there really was a God, you would live better with each other. 

Prove it.

It’s not a new struggle.  There has always been a struggle to figure out who God is, what God looks like, is there more than one God? If there is only one God, how does this whole evil thing work?

If Jesus died and rose from the dead but we haven’t seen him for ourselves, how can we be sure that he really rose from the dead?

Prove it.

At the time that Luke wrote his Gospel, the early Christian community was in the middle of a crisis.  In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus tells the disciples and those around him that that generation would not pass away before Jesus returned. 

But that generation was passing away rapidly.  If not already gone. 

And if that was something they were doubting, where else was their faith shaky?

And it’s in the midst of this that Luke gives us this story of Cleopas and his companion traveling from Jerusalem back to Emmaus.  It was the evening of the resurrection and word had been spreading around that Jesus had been raised from the dead. Cleopas and his partner didn’t seem to be on the resurrection party train, though.  They hadn’t seen the risen Christ for themselves.  

But then they were joined by a stranger…one who didn’t seem to have any idea what all had taken place in the past three days…Which, if you were from that area would have been pretty impossible.  But this stranger knew an awful lot about scripture and for seven miles he led them in bible study.  And the topic was the messiah. 

Intrigued by this man, they invite him to stay in their home for the evening.  That’s when it got weird.  Breaking standard protocol, the stranger took on the role of host at the meal…took the bread, broke it, and gave it to them.

They had seen this before…but where?

And in that moment, their eyes were opened.  And in that moment, Jesus vanished from sight. 

In a moment in which bread was broken, they recognized Jesus.  And they RAN back to Jerusalem to tell the disciples, who had also seen the risen Jesus. 

But what about our Emmaus story? It’s really easy to stand here and say that we can always recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread, in the sharing of a cup. And these things are true.  Jesus promises to be present in bread and wine.  And he is.

But there is more to the story than that. 

And in a world where Easter has become a commodity that you can put in a basket and wrap with pastel cellophane and tie with a pretty bow for only $14.99 at Walmart, for many, there is that need for proof more concrete than a promise to be there in a meal. 

And to be honest, if someone were to approach me on the street this afternoon and ask me to prove that God exists, I would have to admit that I can’t.  None of us can, really.  Because God exists beyond the realm of explanation, and to try and put a skin color or age or any other physical characteristic on God is to put God into a box and make God an it rather than the thou that God is.  To paraphrase the Rev. Dr. Martin Marty, when we think we have proven that God exists, it’s not God.  That’s what faith is all about.  And that’s why faith seems so silly to critics…how can you believe in something you cannot prove scientifically?

What I could, do, on the other hand, is speak of my experience of God, and more particularly of Christ in the world.  Because while I do see Christ in the bread and in the wine we take at communion, it’s not just there that I know that he’s present. I see him in friends and family, in first responders, doctors and nurses, in teachers, in mothers and fathers, in aid workers, in people who help the least of these…I see Christ.  Jesus has a funny way of going around and disguising himself in other people’s skin.  You can see him in the child smiling and laughing in church on Sunday, in the kid who helps his classmate pick up her books in the hallway on Monday, in the volunteer at Ronald McDonald house on Tuesday.  In the places where suffering lives, you can see Christ, not in the suffering itself, but in those who come to the aid of the ones who are suffering.  And he promises to not leave us alone until he has done for us what he has promised. But we’ll hear about that in a few weeks. 

Surely Jesus is with us, even though we don’t always know it.